Sunday, October 11, 2009

Artist Trading Cards





Sunflowers and Dragonflies creative designs is have a atc challenge. I though I would play along and share a few of my atc's with you. I have been trading atc's for many of years and have a large collection of them.

On the left side my atc is called Dragonfly, to the right that one is called Flower Pot (that is the first atc I ever made) and the to the bottom is called The Cats Meow.

If you would like to check out their blog their email is http://www.sunflower-dragonflies.ca/blog/

They always have some interesting challenges. With this one they give use some information about how atc's started. I also learned from this because I did not know how they got started. First of all you never sell or buy an atc you always trade them. The size for then is 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 always. They are miniature works of art. The idea of making atc's was born in 1997 by a Swiss artist M. Vanci Stirnemann. He wanted to document his work, and the work of others at the conference and discovered that the cost was far to grand to print a catalogue of the 1,200 participants. Stirnemann decided to create 1,200 cards by hand so that he could distribute them to everyone who attended the art show. Everyone was encouraged to do the same and at the end of the show the atc's were traded. This was a very successful idea that rapidly spread across the world.
On the backs of atc's the artist always put their name, contact information, name of the atc and they numbered them. Like if they made 3 of the same atc they would put 1 of 3, 2 of 3, 3 of 3, this way you new how many of that atc was made.

I hope you enjoyed this bit of information.